


Other Ways to Sell the Sun

by ignipes



Category: Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-14
Updated: 2007-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:56:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The evening before that thing with the guy in Belize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Ways to Sell the Sun

The sun goes down over the cay, warm island light fading with languid island ease, and the packed-sand street fills with tourists in bright colors and plastic sandals, cameras around their necks and money belts tucked into their khakis. Music and laughter from a dozen different bars mingles in a gentle cacophony, and Danny takes his time winding through the village, feigning the bored indifference of half a week's familiarity and the holiday exhaustion of too much sand and surf.

Three nights running and it's the same little place by the water: a twelve-table dive with tiki torches jammed into the sand and college co-eds crowding the bar, a menu written on plywood in black marker and music that's mostly drums rattling through cheap speakers strung up on wooden posts. Danny watches the kids by the bar for a few seconds, considering. Halfway to drunk already and downing Belikin like it's water, they're too easy, too stupid and too young, not even a temptation.

He steps through the crooked arbor that serves as an entrance and smiles at the dark-eyed waitress; she smiles back, local to tourist, and spins out of reach of one kid's enthusiastic elbows.

Slipping into a plastic chair, cracked and faded from the sun, Danny says, "Tell me, is it the food or the ambiance that draws you to this fine establishment?"

"Neither." Rusty's slouched into the chair across the table like he was born there, the picture of a careless traveler from his sunburned, unshaven face down to the flip-flops on his feet. Rusty's shirt is open at the chest and his sleeves are rolled up, and Danny knows if anybody asks how he spent his day he'll spin a detailed and boring story about snorkeling and giant stingrays, possibly with an imaginary and painful encounter with a crab thrown in for good measure. Rusty makes a vague gesture that probably means something to the waitress and goes on, "It's the little umbrellas that come with the drinks. This is the only place on the island that has the blue ones."

There are two little blue umbrellas on the table already, stuck open in the cracks in the wood, along with an empty plate and a drink that's just as blue as the umbrellas and adorned with a spiral straw and three different kinds of fruit.

He's not sure he wants to know about the drink, not yet, so Danny asks, "You talk to Miguel?"

"He's good."

"And the kids-"

"All set."

"What about the-"

"Six a.m. sharp."

"And-"

"Ready since April and itching to move."

"The boat?"

Now Rusty's starting to smile and Danny's pretending to ignore it, and he figures he's got forty-five seconds until he's told to relax. He doesn't like working on islands, never has and never will; he doesn't like relying on other people for transportation and being able to count their exit strategies on one hand with most of the fingers leftover.

"The boat's good," Rusty says. He picks up his drink and stabs the ridiculous straw into a chunk of pineapple, pauses with it halfway to his mouth. "Relax. Everything's set."

"Even the-" Danny stops when the waitress walks over. She sets a drink before him, clear liquid and green leaves in a sweating glass, winks at Rusty as she walks away again. Danny stares at the drink for a moment. "I don't like mojitos."

"No," Rusty says slowly. "You don't like the _idea_ of mojitos. You think they're beneath you, and you're afraid of getting mint stuck in your teeth." His mouth of full of pineapple but his words are clear.

Danny watches him chew and swallow, thinking about skin that smells like sunshine and two days' worth of stubble, and he wonders if this is another one of Rusty's annoyingly logical alcohol-as-life metaphors. "But?"

"But you think they taste good," Rusty finishes.

It's a disappointing bit of philosophy as far as it goes, a little too much undisguised Hedonism and not enough thoughtful Zen, but Danny takes a sip and shrugs in agreement. "What are you drinking?" It has to be asked, for both their sakes, and now is as good a time as any. "It's blue," he adds pointedly, in case Rusty is thinking of prevaricating. (Because, let's face it, Rusty is breathing, so Rusty is thinking of prevaricating).

Rusty holds the glass up and examines it by the light of the tiki torches. "I have no idea," he admits. "I ordered it to match my shirt."

Danny laughs, because there's probably more truth in that answer than lie, and reaches across the table to steal one of Rusty's tiny blue umbrellas before returning to the more important matter at hand, namely: "What about the eels?"

The eels are new. So new, in fact, they haven't even named the play yet. Rusty has been lobbying hard for "The Little Mermaid," but Danny thinks they should go for something with a little more respectability, a little more panache.

"It's too long," Rusty says, pointing his straw at Danny and picking up the argument before it's even begun. "Too literary. 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'? Takes too long to say, it'll never catch on. The eels are ready."

He says it like he's waiting for Danny to disagree, or maybe he's just waiting for Danny to make his way all the way through the list. It doesn't matter what's on the list; it's the night before and Rusty has already been over it ten, fifteen, twenty times, checking and double-checking, and he's calm and comfortable with a radioactive blue drink and island carelessness buzzing through his veins, waiting for Danny to catch up.

"Will Mrs. Cruces be a problem?" Danny asks finally. He twirls the little blue umbrella between his fingers of one hand and raises his glass with the other. It's a little thing but it's the last thing, and he wouldn't be good at what he does if he didn't know that the Mrs. Cruces of the world are sometimes the biggest problems around.

"Mrs. Cruces will not be a problem." Rusty looks like he's going to leave it at that, but he changes his mind and grins, bright and impish. "Definitely not a problem. She likes me. She wants me to marry her granddaughter."

They've only been on the island for three days; it would be hard to believe if it weren't so easy to believe. This is Rusty and there are grandmothers on six continents who want him for a grandson - or, rather, they want some variation of who he's pretending to be that day, a ready combination of easy laughter and boyish charm and holding doors for old ladies and calling them "ma'am."

"Maybe you should," Danny says, because that's what he always says and he's too busy watching Rusty chew on that stupid straw to shift his mind and mouth out of autopilot. "Retire. Settle down. Spend your days convincing tourists they're having the time of their lives." Just another scam, any way you look at it, selling sand and saltwater to sunscreen-lathered marks and their scowling kids, but Danny can no more imagine Rusty retiring to the beach than he can imagine the all-important eels rising up to perform choreographed numbers from _Guys and Dolls_. "You'd make a killing," he says generously. He only half believes it.

"Maybe I should," Rusty agrees. He lets it hang there for a second, nonsense between them, and glances away when the kids by the bar burst into raucous laughter. But when he turns back to Danny the look in his eyes is sly rather than dreamy. "But it would never work out. I told her I was already married."

"And what did Mrs. Cruces say to that?"

"She didn't say anything," Rusty says, his voice low with mock concern, "but you might want to use my shower tonight instead of yours."

"Is that so?"

"And check under your bed before you go to sleep."

"That bad, huh?"

"Or maybe just avoid the bed altogether, because I know how you feel about spiders."

They both pause, the umbrella still between Danny's fingers and the straw motionless in Rusty's mouth, and they both shudder.

"That's low," Danny says. "I still have nightmares."

"I know you do," Rusty assures him sympathetically. "There's nothing worse."

"I didn't knew Mrs. Cruces had it in her."

"You'd be surprised what a determined old lady can do.

He wouldn't, he really wouldn't, not after that incident in Budapest with the loaf of bread, but Danny drinks his mojito and stretches his legs out under the table and asks, "So everything is ready?"

Rusty gives him a look that's halfway between "o, ye of little faith" and "ask me again and you're sleeping on the beach with the spiders," but he doesn't say any of it out loud, just grins and drops the straw on the table and drains the last of his blue drink. The eels are ready, the kids are ready, the boat is ready. Pieces in place on the game board, dominoes lined up on the table, players on the field and nothing left to do but wait for the clock to strike and the game to begin, and waiting is the only part of the game that Danny hates.

They thought of everything. It's going to work.

He doesn't say anything, but Rusty's smile grows wide and he stands, smooth motion and effortless grace, and he leans down as he passes Danny's chair. One warm hand on Danny's chest, a move borrowed from adjusting a tie or stealing a passport or some combination of the two, and his lips brush against Danny's ear when he says, "That's why you keep me around."

"Well, yes." Danny finishes his drink and speaks to the empty chair across from him. "That's one reason."

He sets the glass on the table, tosses a few crumpled bills beside it, and smiles at the waitress again as he leaves.


End file.
